Michael Byers | ‘Anne B’ For Work/Life

April 05, 2011 Michael Byers

Levy Creative Management artist MIKE BYERS creates a very special piece for the second edition illustration directory called WORK/LIFE. This is a beautifully laid out directory of illustrators world wide by the talented Janine Vangool from Uppercase gallery in Calgary Alberta. The first one was a great success for everyone involved and so Janine decided to create a volume 2 with even more talent to showcase.

Instead of giving you my own thoughts about this image, I’m going to share Mike’s blog post as this became a very personal piece for Mike…

Below is the image I did. It’s funny how things go for illustrators. We think of ourselves as visual communicators. We interpret stories, narratives, and other things of that nature that come before us and present our idea of what the words are in pictures. Well here our task was to represent the idea or concept of WORK/LIFE. It was the idea that your work is your life and your life is your work. One thing I particularly love about an illustrators method of creating is that we can have an idea behind an image and as life goes on, so too does the meaning of the image. Just like a song, even if the author or creator meant for it to mean one thing someone else can get an entirely different meaning out of it. I love that. I love it especially when it happens to me when looking at my own work.
This piece was initially done with the WORK/LIFE theme in mind. I thought it’s funny to think of someone fishing. It’s like what we do. We fish for ideas. We don’t always come up with a winner or “the big one” but we still love the fact that we are able to do what we love.
That was the initial meaning. Then as I was going to go to final it began to mean even more for me. I ended up doing the final just after my father passed away. I thought it was a great idea because my father loved to fish. I was one if his favorite past times. I’m sure he’s doing it now. The name on the boat is the name on the boat he last owned. He loved his boat. He looked forward to getting out onto any body of water in the “Anne B” and try his hardest to catch something. The biggest thing my dad caught in my mind was a mountain of respect and love from anyone he came in contact with. The Anne B named after my second mom’s name. By that I mean my wonderful stepmother. He would have taken her in his pocket everywhere if he could. Thank goodness for cell phone technology because when he finally got one he was able to do just that.
I know I’m going off on a tangent but I love to take any opportunity to talk about how wonderful my Dad is.
If you want to go check out this book then I suggest you do so here. It’s fantastic.